Fucking boils. They irritate him like the world's worst midge bite, leaving the giant with bared teeth and pinned ears. The bruise from his fight with the bear has all but faded, so his only memento of the battle is these damned boils - not the prize he wanted to take away from such a glorious fight. Perhaps this is the bear's way of getting revenge from beyond the grave, punishing those who felled him.

He returns to the Falls often, because since discovering them he has decided he rather likes them. In his mind, he owns them, as he has rubbed his bulk on numerous trees and spilled his scent across several patches of parched red land. The crimson waterfalls mimic his bloodied soul, and he loves them. In addition, he can't help but think the cure to his boil-related ills lie in this land. This is where he caught the bastard things, after all - surely this will be where he finds the antidote to their poison.

But he has already tried everything he can think of. He ate the foliage, rubbed the trees, ate the bear hair, even bathed in the damned Falls, and nothing works. Is he doomed to keep this disease forever? Irritably, the beast rips up chunks of grass from the ground, moonlight beating down on his powerful back as he grazes. Maybe a brainwave will come to him whilst he eats. His dragon dances in the skies high above, breathing icy blasts of frost into the air and dancing around his own creations. Pinning his wings, he swoops; another blast of breath freezes a bright red tree branch, and it falls to the ground with a thud. The red plays with his icy toy, digging his claws into the frigid husk and lapping at the water that dribbles from it. ""

A grunt comes from the behemoth as something nudges against his hip, and he swings around with pinned ears, ready to attack - but his would-be assailant is quick to apologize, and the mammoth colt allows himself to relax with a huff of cool air from his nostrils. "Mind your step," comes his slightly abrupt rumble, but his voice lacks any real venom. The boils have sapped his usual attitude, not to mention a healthy dose of his arrogance. It is difficult to swagger around like a thick-set badass when he feels like a hideous spotty teenager.

He runs his crimson gaze lazily across the other stallion, recognising him as one of the Rift-spawned creatures from the bear fight. Volterra had noticed this man's distinctive appearance in particular, as it isn't every day he sees somebody with crystals growing out of them, and vivid red veins standing stark against their skin. Naturally Volterra's eyes linger on the crystals, wondering if it hurts to have them growing from your flesh like other horses would sport horns or wings. How did they get there? "You are one of those from the Rift, aren't you?" he questions. He is surprised that one has remained - he had assumed they had all been sucked back through to whence they came. Looks like Helovia now has an added bundle of mutants to add to its population.

His dragon, bored with the rapidly melting frozen twig, springs onto his bonded's scarred hindquarters and peers around his neck at the crystalized stallion. "Pretty," remarks the red, who finds the crystals rather attractive, given that they match the hue of his glistening ruby scales. Volterra supposes they are beautiful, in their own way, but they also exude a deadly threat - a bit like Vérzés. "How is Helovia treating you?" It's only now that the colt's attention has drifted from the crystals that he notices the way the older stallion is damn near trembling, sweating like he has just run a marathon. Idly, the beast wonders why.

Crystarius, introduces the man. How fitting. "Volterra," comes his own introduction. Nice dragon, adds the crystal-infected stallion, and the yearling snorts his agreement. The red, preening with the compliment, takes to the wing again and performs a series of acrobatic maneuvers to display his strength and aerial prowess. The weak sunlight glistens from his crimson scales, each one iridescent, before he tilts and lands back on his bonded's firm hindquarters.

The other black calls Helovia fine, which the colt supposes he agrees with. Not that he has anywhere to compare it to, given that he has never set foot outside its borders. Crystarius continues by pointing out that he didn't always look like this, and again the beast's crimson gaze is drawn to those vicious shards of crystal that stand sentinel out of his hide. It must hurt, surely. He wonders if they are fused to his bones as well, if red torture flows through his very veins. He wonders if the man was cursed, or simply damned unlucky to end up like that. The crystals are beautiful, but there's a lot of things in the world that are beautiful that Volterra would not want sticking out of his skin.

"What happened?" he questions, unable to contain it. He is older now, wiser, and so less likely to bombard strangers with twenty questions about every interesting little thing about them. But curiosity still reigns inside his tarnished soul, and this Rift-born creature is of particular interest to him. He, along with the others of his kind, burst onto Helovian soil in the midst of battle. Although they resemble horses, they seem to be intrisically different to Helovian natives, despite any physical similarities. This is the colt's chance to dissect and study one of the new creatures, to discover exactly what they are and where they came from. When he thinks of the Rift, he imagines a black sea of nothingness, but surely that cannot really be the case.